As the owner of a private practice, preventing missed appointments should be one of your top priorities. Not only do missed appointments mean that you lose money, but you also lose the time you spend waiting for your absentee clients.
Few people intentionally miss their appointments. Most often, someone misses their appointment because it simply slipped their mind or because they’re running late. Still, there are strategies you can use in your practice to help your clients remember and show up for their sessions, on time and ready to go! And the #1 strategy is to let Owl Practice help your clients schedule their own appointments through our Client Portal feature.
Online Appointment Booking
Now and then, everyone can be a little absent-minded—after all, life can get busy, and even the most well-organized among us forget things sometimes. When it comes to remembering important appointments, like sessions with a mental health professional, it’s surprisingly easy to let those appointments slip through the cracks.
However, if your clients book their own sessions, they’re much more likely to remember and add them to their personal calendars. Owl Practice makes it incredibly easy for your clients to log into your practice’s private portal to see the times and dates that are available. They simply need to pick the best slot for their schedule!
Another significant benefit of allowing clients to book their own appointments is that it saves you and your private practice time. Rather than your client getting into a conversation with you or your receptionist about scheduling, they can go into the system and book their session themselves. It might not sound like a huge time saver, but believe us, we have the numbers to prove that it adds up!
Other Ways to Prevent No-Shows
Even if you allow your clients to book their own appointments through your online portal, there’s still a chance that they might forget. After all, many appointments are made months ahead, and even if your client puts their appointment in their calendar, it still might slip their mind the week or day of their scheduled session.
In such cases, Owl has you covered with automatic appointment reminders! When a client books a session, you can automatically send reminders to them through email and/or SMS.
These reminders will give your clients a friendly “heads up” about their appointments. You can set a range for every client, customizing what times and how often they receive reminders. Our advice is to send a reminder one week before the appointment, one day before, and one the day of. You can also personalize these reminders for each client, so they aren’t coming across as robotic templates.
With these friendly reminders, paired with our online appointment booking system, the likelihood that someone will miss an appointment again is significantly reduced. But not impossible!
Video Therapy to the Rescue
If someone knows that they have an appointment, but they’re running very late, there’s still a chance they might miss their session—especially if they face a significant commute. In those cases, why not suggest that your client shift to a video session?
With Owl’s Video Therapy, your client can let go of the stress of being late and instead have their appointment in the comfort of their own home, using the device of their choosing (e.g. phone, tablet, laptop). It’s a great emergency option if they would otherwise miss their scheduled time!
These are just a few of the ways Owl Practice can help you ensure that your clients show up for all their appointments. If you’d like to learn more about how Owl Practice can help you manage the business side of your practice, we invite you to sign up for a 14-day free trial! If you have any other questions or comments about our services, please contact us at support@owlpractice.com.
As Always,
Practice Wisely
